For many years, people have collected photographs and placed them in physical albums in order to preserve and share them with other people. In recent years, with the advent of digital photography, photographs are taken and stored on personal computers and other storage devices. Digital photographs can be burned onto DVDs and CD-ROMs and shared with others.
Many digital cameras allow users to connect the camera to a television to display the digital photographs stored in the camera. Some services, such as those offered by KODAK, allow people to receive CD-ROMs with digital images stored on them, whether taken with a digital camera or a film based camera. In addition, some DVD players could read DVDs and CD-ROMs such that digital photo albums can be watched on a television.
Even more recently, technology has been developed that allows digital photographs to be uploaded to servers on the Internet and shared with other people. Websites such as OFOTO, FLICKR, SHARPCAST, and SNAPFISH have provided various ways to organize and collect digital photographs.
Digital photography has also become more and more ubiquitous in that mobile phones and other handheld devices are being sold with integrated digital cameras. Accordingly, more and more photographic content is available in digital form for which new distribution mechanisms need be developed.